


the things I would do for your sake

by thesecretdetectivecollection



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: And Frank is a little bit compromised when it comes to Matt, DarkMatt, Fratt Week 2020, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, M/M, Matt is compromised when it comes to Foggy let's be real, also a little bit of torture, for the prompt bone, for the sake of extracting information
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24451339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecretdetectivecollection/pseuds/thesecretdetectivecollection
Summary: Foggy goes missing. Matt gets his phone out and dials the number before he can even think it through.“Red?” Frank answers gruffly.“Whatever you’re doing tonight, drop it.”“Look, I know you don’t approve—““I need your help.” Matt’s voice is shaking. God, his voice is shaking. “I need your help, Frank. Please.”“Where are you?"
Relationships: Frank Castle & Matt Murdock, Frank Castle/Matt Murdock, Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 11
Kudos: 229
Collections: Fratt Week





	the things I would do for your sake

Foggy was supposed to come out for drinks. He had just gone home to change into something more casual, and then he and Matt were going to go out for drinks.

Matt sits in Josie’s for an hour, calls Foggy and gets his voicemail. He stays another hour after that, calling him every fifteen minutes like an obsessed girlfriend, and after five missed calls, he throws down a handful of dollar bills and leaves. Josie must have seen that something was wrong, because she doesn't even give him shit for not buying a drink, for taking up a seat and sipping at water for two hours.

His mind is racing, trying to figure things out. Foggy had seemed a little off all day, a little on edge, nervous around people he didn’t know.

He’d lied point-blank when Matt had asked him about it, not wanting him to worry. Of course, that only made him worry about ten times as much, so it wasn’t particularly helpful.

Matt goes to Foggy’s place first—it’d been a long couple of days, maybe he’d crashed on the sofa and slept through the phone calls. He knows that that probably isn’t what happened, but god, he hopes—he has to hope, can’t stop himself.

By the time he opens Foggy’s door, he’s whispering Hail Marys and Our Fathers under his breath, begging God to please, let Foggy be behind this door. Please let him be sleeping. Please let him be hooking up with someone, or let him have forgot, or let him have dropped his phone—please, God, let him be okay.

Foggy’s not there, though, and the air is stale, none of his scent lingering.

He never got home.

Foggy _never got home_.

Matt’s heart is racing and he knows he has to be calm, but this is Foggy, and he can’t _think_ —

He’s got his phone out and dialing the number before he can even think it through.

“Red?” Frank answers gruffly.

“Whatever you’re doing tonight, drop it.”

“Look, I know you don’t approve—“

“I need your help.” Matt’s voice is shaking. God, his voice is shaking. “I need your help, Frank. _Please_.”

“Where are you?” There’s a quiet rustle across the line, Frank packing up his things, probably shrugging up one shoulder to keep the phone pressed against his ear.

“They took Foggy, I’m coming to your safehouse, grab whatever you need. Frank, we’ve got to—I can’t _lose_ him, Frank, I _can’t_ —“

“Calm down, Red. You in your pajamas?”

“Street clothes. We were supposed to meet for drinks.”

“Get changed and meet me at mine, we’ll figure it out.”

“Okay,” Matt says softly, mind clearing a little bit now that he has some concrete instructions. Get changed, meet Frank, find Foggy, make sure that whoever took him regrets being born, take care of Foggy, never let Foggy out of his fucking hearing range again…

“Hey, Red?”

“Yeah?”

“We’ll get him back.” Frank hangs up after that, and the steadiness in his voice is somehow reassuring.

Matt takes the rooftops back to his own place, and then over to Frank’s safehouse, cracking open a window and walking in.

“Rules of engagement?” Frank asks curtly, loading up a machine gun. He’s wearing his vest, focused on the mission. He’s armed to the teeth, knife strapped to his thigh, a handgun at his ankle, one shoved down his waistband, and for once, it doesn’t make Matt uneasy.

“We need to get him back,” Matt says blankly.

“I meant—“

“I know what you meant. Information is the priority. Once we have it, do what you want.”

Frank’s hands stop in their practiced motions. “Red—“

“They took Foggy,” Matt says quietly. “That doesn’t mean _carte blanche_ , Frank. If you kill someone and they could have given us information, I’ll take you out without even fucking _blinking_ , understood? But once they give us what they want… I’ll turn a blind eye, just for tonight.”

“Christ, you really love this guy, huh.”

“Yeah, I do. And if it comes down to it, your objective is to save him. If it comes down to me versus him, you save _him_ , are we clear?”

“It’s not gonna come to that.”

“If it does, _he_ is your priority. Say it. Promise me.”

“If it comes down to choosing between you and him, I save him,” Frank repeats, his heart stuttering a little.

“You better, or there won’t be a single goddamn place in this city for you to hide from me.”

“I’m on your side this time, Matt,” Frank reminds him quietly, his first name yet another sign of how seriously they’re both taking this.

He can feel himself, can feel the Devil clawing its way out of him, screaming for blood, for the sweet, sweet snap of bone. The Devil wants _vengeance_ , justice be damned.

Frank logs in to Foggy’s email, Matt rattling off the password, and finds a threatening email from the night before. They want Foggy to leave a certain case alone, stop prosecuting a certain corrupt slumlord. Dan Nichols knows a lot of people in a lot of places, including some of Fisk’s people.

Matt can imagine it perfectly, can imagine the sharp tang of Foggy’s sweat, the scent of his fear, the rapid beating of his heart. He can imagine it all, and he knows that despite being utterly terrified, Foggy wouldn’t drop the case against Nichols, not for anything. He wouldn’t stop trying his absolute hardest to get their client the decent living conditions he and his children deserved.

God, Matt loves him so much.

Frank gets on the phone with his own contacts, and comes up with a name—a mafia guy connected to the slumlord. “Jack Reynolds.”

“Let’s go pay Mr. Reynolds a visit, then,” the Devil croons. It’s a gamble, assuming that he knows where Foggy is, that Nichols is using Reynolds’ men to grab him, but it’s the only lead they have.

Frank hefts his gun and straps it to his back. “Lead the way.”

They bust down the door, find him in bed with a woman—a prostitute, by the looks of it, thin and scrawny and smart enough to clear out once the Punisher and Daredevil show up.

“Franklin Nelson,” Matt barks, “where is he?”

“Who the fuck is that?” the guy responds, scrambling to get his boxers back on.

“Franklin Nelson, the attorney at Nelson and Murdock. Your friend Nichols had him taken, and we’re lookin’ for ‘im.” Frank says briskly, flicking the safety off his gun and pointing it at him.

Frank hauls him out of the bed and into a chair. “Bullets or broken bones? See, I’m feelin’ generous tonight, so I’ll let you pick, asshole.”

“What?”

“Bullets. Or. Bones?” Frank repeats slowly, looming over him. “Or both, I guess, if you’re tougher than ya look.”

“Bones,” Matt says, the word like ash on his tongue. “Bones first. Wouldn’t want him passing out from blood loss before we get what we need.”

“See, he’s the smart one,” Frank confides to the Reynolds, “always thinkin’ ahead. Me? I’m just the guy who pulls the trigger.” He takes the guy’s hand in between his own, almost gentle.

Reynolds’ heart is beating almost out of his chest, as Frank takes his index finger and bends it back.

Matt can hear the tendons stretching, knows when Frank’s gotten just short of causing a fracture.

“Are you going to cooperate, Jack?” he asks grimly.

“I don’t know what the _fuck_ you’re talking about—“

“That’ll be three, Frank. We don’t have time to waste.”

Frank has a feral smile on his face as he yanks the finger back. The wet snap of bone satiates the Devil, makes him purr in satisfaction.

Reynolds screams, and Frank breaks a second finger.

“Wait—wait, I’ll tell you!”

“You already cost yourself three fingers, buddy. Should’ve opened your mouth sooner.” Frank snaps his ring finger as easily as if it had been a toothpick.

“Right—look, _it wasn’t me_ , okay, it was _his_ guys, not mine! He has a warehouse, West 48th and 11th, used to be a— _fuck_ , I dunno, plastics, maybe? You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Matt says, _sotto voce_. Frank steps back, levels his gun, but Matt steps in and launches a punch at Reynolds’ head. The Devil screams for more, and he punches him again, and again, until Reynolds’ blood is stinking up the whole damn room.

“ _Matt_.”

It’s all he needs to say. Matt snaps out of it. He kicks the chair over for good measure, the unconscious Reynolds flopping out onto the floor.

“Can I—“ Frank asks, hefting his gun in lieu of finishing the question.

“Up to you,” Matt says carelessly, “but you’ll have to come back after we get Foggy. That comes first.”

He kicks the unconscious man in the face, just for the feeling of cartilage splintering under his boot, and walks out of the room, Frank following along behind him.

There are a lot of men at the warehouse. Frank’s going to be the distraction, occupy their attention while Matt gets Foggy out.

That’s the plan, anyway.

What ends up happening is that there are more men than they thought there would be and they both end up fighting their way through—Frank starting from the front, Matt from the back.

Matt’s doing his best to take people out quietly, to get them unconscious fast and let Frank be loud and attract their attention. There’s the sound of a firefight, gunshots everywhere. Frank’s heart is still steady, though, so he must not have been hit yet, or if he is, the vest must have done its job.

He can hear Foggy, still too far away, heart rabbiting in his chest, unaware of what’s happening, probably thinking he’s in the middle of a gang war. Frank Castle is a one-man army, after all.

The smell of blood is everywhere, a mixture of so many people that Matt almost can’t make out Foggy’s. But he does, smells the slight sweetness to Foggy’s blood, and the Devil roars inside him.

He rips through Nichols’ men faster, breaks arms and shins and at least one femur. Frank’s getting closer.

In fact, Frank gets there first, is already untying Foggy when Matt gets to the room.

“Frank!” Foggy warns, pushing at him.

Matt’s too far away, can’t get there fast enough to cover Foggy from the man pointing a gun at him.

But Frank’s not. He throws himself over Foggy in the split second before the man shoots.

Matt sprints across the room as he disarms the attacker, punches him hard once, twice, lands an elbow into his chest and revels in the wet snap of ribs.

“Please—please—I’m sorry—“ the guy wheezes, breathing wetly through a punctured lung, holding up his hands, gun skidding over to the far side of the room.

“God forgives,” Matt hisses, “the Devil doesn’t.” He pulls his fist back and throws one final punch. The guy’s out cold before he even hits the ground.

He runs faster than he ever has before, but it still feels like he’s running through molasses as he gets to Frank and Foggy.

Frank’s hurt, the taste of his blood bursting across Matt’s tongue. He helps him up.

“Go—I’m fine,” he grunts, and Matt takes him at his word, even though he’s lying, and picks Foggy up, wrapping his arms around him and holding him tight for a moment before he lets go, holding him out at arm’s length to assess.

“Hey,” he says softly, “are you okay? You’re hurt—where did they get you? I’ll call Claire, have her meet us back at your place, okay? I’m staying with you tonight.”

“’m okay,” Foggy says, adrenaline causing his muscles to tremble under Matt’s hands, “’m okay, didn’t say anything—I didn’t say anything, M—Daredevil.”

“Shh, shh, Foggy, I know,” Matt soothes, “Jesus Christ, I’m so _glad_ —you scared the shit outta me, y’know that? Come here, come here, we’re going to get you home. I love you, but if you ever get a fucking threat and don’t _tell_ me again, I’ll kill you myself—“

“Don’t have to hear your heartbeat to know you’re lying,” Foggy says with a little smile, “you’d miss me too much.”

Matt chokes out a laugh. “I really would,” he agrees, pulling him back in for a hug, feeling his own heart slow for the first time in hours.

“Frank—“ Foggy says, “he covered me.”

Now that Foggy’s okay, now that he’s safe—the blood was from a cut on his forehead, but it’s not that deep, and Matt knows better than most that head wounds always bleed freely—the tunnel vision recedes.

He lets Foggy go, pausing a moment to make sure he’s steady on his feet, and turns back to Frank.

“What happened—where did they get you?”

“Shoulder. It’s nothing, it’s fine,” Frank says gruffly, “you get ‘im home, I’ll be fine.”

Matt ignores everything after the first word and leans in close, finding the injury—shitty luck, it’s just a few inches wide of the vest. He touches the back of his shoulder gently, trying to find an exit wound, letting out a breath when he actually finds one.

“Through and through,” he announces.

“Yeah, I coulda toldya that,” Frank mutters. “Now, get your buddy home, Red.”

“Come with us,” Foggy says quietly, “you need medical attention, too. If we call Claire, she’ll come, she can take a look at all of us.”

“All of us?” Frank echoes. Matt can hear the frown in it, can feel the swish of air as Frank’s head snaps back towards him. “If I find out you’re fucking hiding injuries again, you’ll be in worse shape than fucking Reynolds by the time I’m done with you,” he growls.

His heart says the threat is an empty one.

“Foggy’s right. You should come with us—maybe we’ll go to mine, I’ve got a decent first aid kit, I can stitch you both up, let Claire rest tonight.”

“Okay,” Foggy says easily.

“So you, _a blind man_ , offering to stitch me up is you being _nice_?” Frank says incredulously.

Matt chuckles at him and walks over to Foggy, pulling his arm around his shoulders. “Let’s go, Frank. Keep up.”

“He isn’t even hurt! I got _shot_ ,” Frank grumbles halfheartedly, “helpin’ ‘im walk as if he’s got a broken goddamn _leg_ —“

\---  
  


He manages a makeshift bandage for Frank and has him apply pressure while he stitches Foggy up. Claire would yell at him for his shitty triaging, would say that of course gunshot wound beats minor laceration every single day of the week. But Claire’s not here, and Foggy’s just been kidnapped and interrogated. Frank, on the other hand, is a vigilante ex-Marine who’s been shot before. So yeah, Matt thinks he can probably handle a couple more minutes before he gets his turn.

He gives Foggy a sleeping pill and sends him off to sleep in Matt’s bed. He lays down and he’s out almost immediately, probably a combination of the adrenaline crash and the sleeping pill. His cumulative sleep debt probably didn’t help things, either. He’s snoring softly by the time Matt sterilizes the needle and thread for Frank.

“Thread this for me?” he asks him.

“What?”

“The needle. I could do it, but we’d be here until tomorrow,” Matt explains patiently.

“How do you normally do it?” Frank asks, furrowing his brow and squinting at the needle.

“Keep it ready to go before I need it, usually. If Foggy or Claire or someone’s been by, I’ll ask them to thread it for me before they go. If not, I’ll carve out a few minutes and do it myself, but it’s fucking hard.”

Frank presses the needle into his hand, and Matt sets it down carefully on the table. He reaches out and finds the fastenings for the vest, works them open and slides it off.

“How much do you like this shirt?” He asks, hands hovering above the hem, “it’ll be less painful to cut it off.”

“’S’already got a hole in it,” Frank mutters with a one-shouldered shrug.

“Stop that, you know it jars the other side,” Matt scolds, finding the scissors in the kit and snipping the shirt from the neckline down to the hem.

He’s careful as he slides it off Frank’s shoulders, breathes in the familiar scent of gunpowder from his hands, and plain soap from his newly exposed skin.

“So you really _can_ do this, right?” Frank asks him quietly.

“I just did Foggy, what d’you think?”

“I think that boy would let you stab him with a needle even if you were a regular blind guy.”

“Maybe I _am_ a regular blind guy,” Matt says nonchalantly.

Frank barks out a laugh. “Really? You put on a suit and run around beating the shit outta bad guys, and you wanna tell me you’re a regular blind guy? You must really think I’m a moron, Red.”

“You’re not a moron,” Matt says absently, doing the first stitch, “you’re really smart, Frank. Goddamn tactical genius, when you try. That thing you said to Reynolds, that I was the smart one and you just pulled the trigger? That was horse shit and you know it.”

“Eh, I look like an idiot, talk kinda slow sometimes, don’t use eight syllable words in conversation. People think I’m stupid, and I let ‘em. Figures you’d see through that, too.”

“Well, the thing about being blind is that I’m not _quite_ as quick to judge people on their appearance,” Matt says mildly.

Frank hums and the conversation stalls.

“So. You and Nelson. You together?”

“Not romantically, no,” Matt says quietly, “not together.”

“And you never—you never even thought about it?”

“Of course I thought about it. When I first met Foggy—I’d never met anyone like him before, and I haven’t met anyone like him since.”

“Would you? If he made a move?”

Matt pauses to think about it. “Now, or when we first met?”

“Either. Both.”

“Now, probably not. When we met… I hadn’t had a lot of friends before. People are uncomfortable around orphans, and they’re uncomfortable around disabled people, and I was both—I might as well have had the plague. If he’d made a move in those early days, I would’ve gone with it. Probably would’ve ended up marrying him.”

“So what changed?”

Matt can feel himself blushing, doesn’t quite want to tell him. But Frank took a _bullet_ for Foggy tonight, for no reason other than Matt asked him to. That sort of trust called for some reciprocation.

“I found out that friends could become family,” he says simply. “I found out that I could be an orphan and meet someone at eighteen and he could turn into my family. Found out that sometimes, people can love you without being attracted to you or having sex with you. Before, I thought only God could love like that. Unconditionally. And your parents, I guess, but I’d already lost my dad.”

Frank goes quiet, lets him finish the rest of the stitches without saying anything. Matt puts gauze padding on the entry and exit wounds and wraps bandages around, tight enough to maintain a little bit of pressure, but loose enough not to impede circulation. Frank’s skin is so warm, even through the bandages.

Matt tilts his head up, aims to meet his eyes. He leans up, lays his hand against Frank’s stubbled cheek, and presses his lips to his. It’s a chaste, gentle kiss, more tender than he had intended.

“What was that for?” Frank asks, heart beating a little faster.

“Thank you. You saved my family’s life,” Matt says simply.

Frank looks at him. “What if—what if _I_ wanted to thank _you_ , for stitching me up?”

Matt smiles, leans in again. This time the kiss is less chaste, Frank leaning in and parting Matt’s mouth.

“Then you can stop killing people, Frank. I think that would be a really lovely token of your gratitude.”

“Oh, _fuck_ off.”

“Maybe I’d appreciate it so much I’d have to _thank_ you for it,” Matt purrs, leaning in and laying his hand high on Frank’s thigh, feeling a shift in the way Frank’s blood is circulating, as his brain recalculates which parts need it the most right now.

“So the preaching didn’t work, so now you’re tryin’ to seduce me straight?”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Matt says with a shrug.

Frank smiles, shakes his head a little bit.

“I’m gonna head out.”

Matt pulls back, leaves him some space. “You can stay here tonight, if you want. I’m making breakfast tomorrow, and I have enough for one more.”

Frank pauses, clearly considering the offer. “I want to, but I think tonight’s for you and your family, Red.”

Matt shrugs at that, stands up and grabs him a zippered sweatshirt to wear. He stuffs the vest into a duffel bag and hands it to him, walking him to the window and opening it. Frank hesitates a moment and pulls him in for another kiss, his hands slipping under Matt’s t-shirt to lay low on his back.

“Another time, though?” Frank asks him, giving him a chance to walk it back. But it means something, that he asked, that he _wants_ to come back.

“Another time,” Matt agrees, smiling at him, “good night, Frank.”

“Night, Matt.”

Matt closes the window after him and listens to his heartbeat grow quiet as he gets further away, and then he curls up on the sofa and listens to Foggy’s light snores and the thud of his heartbeat, letting the familiar sounds lull him to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> the title is a twist on a line from a poem I wrote. In this case, it applies both to Matt, who violates his principles and is more brutal than usual in order to find Foggy, and to Frank, who drops everything to help Matt, pulls him back when he risks going over the edge, and takes a bullet for Foggy, because Matt asked him to protect his best friend.
> 
> I banged this out in a couple of hours, it is unbetaed, so there may be errors. Let me know what you think!


End file.
